


Punchline

by LazyBaker



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, drunk marcus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 18:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12636450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyBaker/pseuds/LazyBaker
Summary: After a successful exorcism, Marcus and Tomas celebrate with a drink.





	Punchline

**Author's Note:**

> Set in those six months between seasons 1 and 2.

“And this demon, it had the biggest ego, truly, and it—it _says_ —“ Marcus was giggling into his pint, nearly snorting what was left of the ale up his nose. Foam stuck to his mustache and he tried to lick it off. He was far passed pissed. 

The lights of the bar, once dim, hurt his eyes now in the reflection of the decades scratched wood his elbows rested on. Every word tickled him. His feet hardly touched the ground. Hilarity replaced the nitrogen in the air. He could not breathe without laughing it seemed.

“—Do you know what the demon said to me, Tomas? In the voice of my wonderfully departed father?” Marcus said. He tried to look at Tomas and set his glass down on the little circle cardboard coaster, but he could not seem to do both reliably at once. Such complications in life.

“I assume something very, very funny.” Tomas said. Dry as the patches on his elbow, his Tomas. Sober as well. Hadn’t even finished his first drink. 

Marcus leaned towards him, heartened when Tomas did not pull away. He nearly slipped off his stool, grunting as he caught himself on both the bar’s edge and Tomas’ shoulder. It was difficult to get closer on chairs bolted into the cement floor. Tomas steadied him with a hand on his waist. 

“Guess.” Marcus said. 

Tomas pretended to think and Marcus was proud to know he was pretending even though his mind had turned into a slushy, delightful confection of pleasantries and swirling colors. The rocking of his head. The way he looked up at the ceiling, searching for that troublesome correct answer. Tapping at the sharp angle of his chin, now covered in newly born stubble. The exaggerated pucker of his lips, which Marcus lingered on happily. 

It was odd smiling so much. He had no way of knowing if it was from the drink or from Tomas or an exorcism gone well or perhaps God had deigned to yank his lips up and pin them out of spite.

Tomas snapped his fingers, paused and said, “I have no idea.”

“Not even a little bit of one?”

“Nope.”

“Come on.”

“I don’t have a single idea where you’re going with this. Big or small.”

“Medium?”

“If only.”

“Father Tomas, I am deeply disappointed.” 

Tomas rolled his eyes, smiled at him. Humoring him, likely. Or maybe Tomas genuinely, with all that sincerity compacted inside of that clerical collar, liked him. 

His hand was still on Marcus and Marcus’ hand was still on Tomas. He pinched the back of Tomas’ collar to distract himself from that wily urge to touch the back of Tomas’ neck—the trouble it would lead him to.

“Tell me then,” he said. _Humoring me,_ Marcus thought. But he would happily take it.

Marcus was half way off his stool, looping his arm around Tomas, hip pressed to hip. Shoulder to shoulder. Tomas looking up at him with eyes that would be doe like if they didn’t have so much defiance in them.

Marcus grinned. Companionable, that’s what he was. One average bloke with another very average bloke in the middle of Mississippi in the middle of summer in the middle of a wall-to-wall crowded bar he didn’t know the name of, covered in bruises and bites and scratches and what was surely a bit of leftover exorcism related splatter behind his ears. What a wonderful thing friendship was.

“This demon says to me. And mind you, I’ve barely turned fourteen. This asshole of a demon—“

“—isn’t every demon an asshole?”

Marcus leaned back in shock, nearly tipping over, but finding his balance again with Tomas’ hand at his hip and with the elbow he had anchored around Tomas’ nape. “You are the rudest man of God I’ve ever met.”

“Not to talk ill, but you’ve never met Father Garrett from Vancouver then.”

“Don’t distract me with your—your _words_.”

Tomas bowed his head, gesturing with the flat of his palm some speck of contrition Marcus was not about to believe for a second. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No pasa nada, but I don’t think you want to get into a semantics debate with me.”

“Okay, okay. Go on. What did this specific asshole of a demon say to you?”

“ _It says_ to me right in front of Father Sean, who was just starting to not be a complete and utter prick—and I think he was actually a bit fond of me for five minutes somewhere in there between _the father, the son, and the—and the holy ghost_ —“ 

Marcus stopped, unable to talk anymore, his laughter crept up on him and overtook him so completely, clutching his stomach with his free hand, abrupt and lethal, his body smarted with the sharpness of it. He tugged Tomas closer or maybe he pulled himself into Tomas, whichever way, their small bubble of space became smaller and warmer and Marcus wanted to pour himself into it.

He had to press his face against Tomas’ shoulder to gather his composure enough to speak, but afterwards he could not find it in himself to lift his head back up or to even then look at Tomas.

He could feel him shaking, Tomas’ laughter at the mess he was and did not hide to be, softening into gentle rocking waves that he leaned into, carrying him off. It was simple to let his eyes close, to rest against the solidness of Tomas’ body.

A hand touched his arm then cupped the back of his head.

“Maybe we should go back now?” Tomas said quietly. “I can’t remember the last time you’ve slept.”

“I think I was in my twenties, somewhere in Bahia. There was an auntie there with the most comfortable couch.”

“All right, we should go.”

But Marcus had slipped away, the bar gone and there he was, in that sordid underground haven. He could see Father Sean, standing placid and expectant of his prize weapon, lips threatening to turn into that familiar snarl. If Marcus looked behind himself he knew— _he knew_ —he’d be able to see the demon living in a withered young woman whose name he was never told. 

“—It says to me, so proud of itself as though it had figured out the secret to defeating the entirety of the Vatican, it says in the voice of dear ole dad, ‘ _this boy lusts for cock’_.” Marcus wiped his wet eyes on Tomas’ shirt. “I swear, I thought Father Sean was going to toss me out or murder me on the spot. A demonic possession right in front of us, but I’d never seen him more horrified.”

Tomas was a still stone in the embankment. His nails scratched at the fine cropped hairs on Marcus’ head, keeping him close as Marcus laughed, hands grabbing at Tomas, wringing his shirt in his fingers.

Someone bumped into them. The crowd continued and there was singing in the far off corner. Stomach churning Marcus untangled and pushed away from Tomas, unable to look passed the white of his collar.

“We should get some tequila to celebrate.” Marcus managed after a few false starts. Dizzy and a bit wobbly on his feet. Tomas caught him, hands on his waist leading him to sit on Tomas’ vacated stool—his own had been taken. Marcus envisioned, then, the first fight he would take an active role in as an excommunicated man and thought it best if it were over something other than a taken seat.

Tomas stood over him, the act of looking up at him nearly had Marcus start laughing all over again. Gently Tomas placed his hands on Marcus’ face, Marcus stilling immediately and held his breath as Tomas pressed a kiss to his forehead, pulling back to give him a stern look.

“You are a good man, Marcus. If I ever meet this Father Sean I will have some very strong words to say to him.”

And that hurt, somehow. To have someone wade through his shit and still want to stand beside him. 

His hands trembled on his lap.

“My hero.” He said, trying for somewhere near sarcastic, but his smile came out crooked and his voice had gone awfully wobbly or drunk beyond repair despite feeling more sober than he’d prefer. “Shots?”

“No. It’s time for bed, I think. I’ll tell you about Father Garrett while we walk.” Tomas said. He pulled out his wallet and paid. His hand an immovable constant on Marcus’ back as they left the bar, Tomas acting as a buffer between Marcus and the crowd. 

Out in the humid heat Marcus breathed in the thick, southern air until his chest hurt, so aware of Tomas’ hand staying on him as they walked back to their motel, laughing quietly as Tomas described the many ill fates of Father Garrett’s unlucky students in seminary. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I loved the idea of a demon outing Marcus and went with it  
> \- Tomas has listened to thousands of Marcus' awful jokes and was not prepared for the feelings  
> \- Marcus is never prepared for the feelings  
> \- The first time Tomas has ever kissed Marcus (but not, you know, the last)  
> \- My first Exorcist fic!
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://granpappy-winchester.tumblr.com)


End file.
